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On the F15-E, can the WSO take over if the pilot is incapacitated?
The F15-E Strike Eagle features a two-man cockpit. The pilot in the front seat and the WSO (Weapons System Officer) in the back seat.
If the jet is cruising straight and level is mechanically sound but the pilot becomes completely incapacitated (from a heart attack for example) can the WSO take over and land the aircraft? I could imagine that the correct procedure may be to just eject both the pilot and themselves. Do WSO's learn to fly the F15?
The following image is the backseat cockpit area of a F-15 E where the WSO sits. Note the control stick and the throttle control I've highlighted with red arrows. Surely this means the WSO has the ability to take over control?

source(http://i61.tinypic.com/dbqp2q.jpg)

Side question: If your left arrow points to the throttle, what's the same control on the right side?

@user1352057 Please provide proper attribution for your image.

@sweber good spot! Please see Paveway3's answer to what these 'sticks' are.

The WSO actually does have a throttle, but it is not visible in this picture.  It is behind and to the left of the left hand side stick controller marked with the arrow.  It is much simpler than the front seat throttle, which has a lot of "HOTAS" switches on it that he WSO doesn't need.

Short answer, yes.  However, it is important to note that the WSO is not a pilot.  The WSO is trained to operate the weapons systems, not fly the aircraft, but does have basic flight controls including throttle, stick, rudder pedals, compass, HSI, etc.  He does not have good forward visibility and would likely have to be talked in on final approach by the tower, as his view is obstructed by the pilot's seat.
Although the F-15E was developed from the D-model used for pilot training, the airframe was significantly redesigned for it's new purpose, and the back seat of an E-model bears only a passing resemblance to the back seat of a D-model.  The WSO has a very specific and complex set of tasks which does not include flying the airplane, and his controls are designed around that purpose.  He has more screens than the pilot to look at, and two side-stick controllers (not part of the flight control system) that are used for controlling / selecting / guiding / programming / etc. a large variety of weapons. He also has primary control over the FLIR and laser pods used for target designation and tracking.
On a final note, it is not uncommon (although less common in these days of sequestration) for non-aircrew personnel to be given 'incentive rides' in the back seat of aircraft like the F-15D/E or F-16D, and during these rides control of the aircraft is invariably passed to the passenger.  I was privileged enough during my Air Force career to get a ride in the back seat of an F-15E (tail number 88-1671 at Seymour Johnson AFB, NC) and can say from personal experience that it is possible to fly an F-15E from the back seat.  It was the most exhilarating 5 minutes of my life.  Fortunately for both of us, the pilot didn't experience any problems during the flight...

Welcome to Aviation.SE, it's good to hear about first hand experience!

@Paveway3 thanks for your excellent answer. Do WSO's receive basic flight training on the F-15E? I.e at the least how to fly a circuit and land?

I know that they do extensive emergency procedures training, but I don't know to what extent they actually get into flying and landing the aircraft.  It would depend a lot on the situation, location, and condition of the pilot and aircraft, and there is probably not a definitive yes or no answer as to whether or not the WSO would attempt to land or simply eject both of them.
Another comment mentioned the ability of the WSO to extend but not raise the landing gear.  His control is labeled 'emergency gear extend', which is indicative of his expected role in flying the aircraft...emergency only.

Yes. They can fly the aircraft if required. The F-15E is developed from F-15D , which is used for aircrew training, with the instructing pilot in the rear seat.

There is atleast one documented case where the WSO controlled the aircraft, albeit briefly. On March 2012, a F-15E crashed, killing the pilot. During the accident, as a result of pilot actions, the WSO decided that the pilot has suffered spatial disorientation and attempted to recover, before initiating the ejection sequence. From USAF Accident Investigation Report:

At that point, the MWSO believed that the MP did not know which way was up ... . The MWSO grabbed the controls and rolled the MA left towards a near wings-level position... The MWSO then pulled 11 g while rolling left to wings-level... As the MWSO rolled the MA to nearly level flight, he initiated ejection for the MC...

Honest question - why would there be a control stick and throttle levers in the rear seat if they didn't actually allow for control of the aircraft when necessary?

@JulesMazur In all likelyhood, yes. Some of the commands and controls for operating the weapons and targeting systems are going to be part of the HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) system, and it's going to be cheaper to just duplicate those same controls from the pilot seat for the WSO seat. But just because they are wired up to operate the radar, doesn't mean they will be linked to the flight control systems.

@JulesMazur  Because the cost of redesigning them is higher than that of buying and installing them.

The WSO can do everything from the back seat, but there is one thing he cannot do. He can lower the landing gear, but he cannot raise it.
As far as ejecting, the WSO has the option of ejecting himself or both.

Citation needed!  This would be an extremely surprising omission.

i used to work on F-15E's.

Still needs a citation. It's astonishing that they would give the WSO -- or especially an instructor -- everything except the final piece they need to get home alive. Putting that control stick in the rear seat cost hundreds of times more than it would cost to put in a switch or two so why would they stop short?

@CareyGregory why do they need to raise the gear to get home alive?

I don't know but have there never been circumstances when gear needs to be retracted to land? For example, when one wheel won't lower? It just seems very strange to me that the designers would leave out one and only one control when it would be fairly inexpensive to add it.

@CareyGregory better land on 2 wheels and have it settle on the wing at low speed than do a belly landing. And even though it might be fairly inexpensive to build, it also has to be maintained, stocks of spares kept, etc. etc., which raises the cost significantly.

@CareyGregory -- It's because the "Emergency Gear Release" is a completely different control switch (manual, actuates a pressure dump solenoid IIRC that drops the gear and flaps, similar in design to the space shuttle orbiter's system) than the actual gear actuation control box. There is a size, weight, cost penalty to adding another complete control unit: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/43686/14921

A pilot in my B Course G-loc’d and the Instructor WSO recovered the aircraft and started the RTB process.   Student pilot came to later and took over to land.  The HUD repeater makes forward visibility problem somewhat of a no -factor.
2000 Hr strike eagle WSO

The WSO has an emergency landing gear handle that can be pulled in case of a loss of hydraulic pressure. It gives just enough pressure to lower the gear and flaps once. That's enough for the WSO to land the plane in an emergency and leaves space for systems that are more relevant to their job.


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MH370 Curved Track / Arc to southwest...Isn't this also affected by the Earth's motion?
How does the Earth's eastward motion figure into the tracks proposed by Inmarsat data etc?

Not significantly. The aircraft flies in the air. The air moves over the earth and takes the plane with it. Of course wind is affected by the rotation of the earth, but there is little direct effect of Earth's rotation on the motion of the plane. The coriolis forces have a negligible effect on the aircraft's track.
The Inmarsat satellite used is geostationary, so it rotates as fast around the earth as the earth around its axis. The nett effect is zero.

Plus,  depending on the map used,  a great circle / straight course may render as an arc.

@yankeekilo yes indeed. Plus that the initial arcs published by Inmarsat were arcs of constant distance from the satellite, not the track of the aircraft.

Aren't all weather systems due to coriolis forces acting on the air? Since the plane is moving through the air, it would have same, significant, effect on the plane, wouldn't it? You could of course cut down the complexity and say the aircraft is pushed by the wind, same thing :)

@roe no, not all weather systems.

@federico ok, all low and high pressure systems then

@roe as you wish, but you still do not consider that the aircraft is pushed by the engines and that if a course is set, any deviation due to wind will be corrected.

The earth's rotation affects aircraft in much the same way as it affects you and I on the surface. From that perspective we are all being carried along at around 1000 MPH. Since the atmosphere is a very very very thin layer of gas above the surface, it pretty much rotates with the surface. You'll notice the oceans don't slosh across the continents every 24 hours too.
As Federico pointed out, following a constant magnetic heading from a fixed point on the surface will not be affected by the speed of rotation of the planet. Your navigational frame of reference is earth-centric not solar-centric (say).

"You'll notice the oceans don't slosh across the continents every 24 hours too." They do it every 12.5 hours! (But only a little bit.)

The problem with this question is that there is a seriously wrong assumption behind: you are assuming that the airplane drifts along a course, like a curling stone after being launched, and is affected by all kind of environmental disturbances.
The thing is that the airplane has engines and control surfaces, in the case in question even an autopilot: if a certain course/track is selected, the plane will follow it, eventual wind will simply change the attitude at which the plane is flying (yaw for side component, pitch for front component), not the ground track. Unless you are in sidewinds/headwinds that exceed the top airspeed of the aircraft, but that was not likely the case.

If the side winds exceed the top airspeed of the aircraft, deviating from the ground track is the least of your problems, I believe ;-)

@JanDvorak indeed :D

Ah, so that's what happened when I tried flying my Cessna through a tornado funnel!

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Could flight MH370 have suffered decompression due to a high altitude bird strike?
MH370 was flying at 11 km altitude at a speed of 872 km/h. It is known that some birds can fly at this altitude, e.g. the Rüppell's vulture. So, could such a bird hitting the windscreen at roughly 900 km/h cause cracks that would lead to decompression? And would such a scenario fit the known facts about MH370?

Being intentionally flown off course only to hit a bird at that altitude would be incredibly bad luck.

Or before it went off course...

I would recommend re-writing this question, removing the references to MH370 completely. No one knows what happened to that flight, so anything given would be pure speculation. Asking only about the probability of, or effects of, an extreme high altitude bird strike might be more on topic. Voting to close as is written.

Hmmmm, but then the prior probability if a rare event is not the same as the postiori probability that it happened given the known facts. If the chance of a freak event is one in a billion per flight, then sooner or later this will happen to some flight. So, the question is really that given some characterics of a flight, what is the probability that the freak event happened to that flight.

would such a scenario fit the known facts about MH370?

The evidence presented by the team searching for the aircraft includes

No voice communications using any of multiple radio systems available to cockpit crew.
Transponder ceased responding to secondary radar.
ADS-B transmissions ceased.
ACARS transmission ceased.
Aircraft made a change of course back across Malaysia
Malaysian military tracked an aircraft believed to be MH370 apparently following waypoints in the Malacca straights (suggesting another change of course)
Satellite data appears to show MH370 then flying to the south for many hours on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.

It isn't clear how a bird strike could disable the pilots and also cause the failure of all automated communication systems whilst allowing the autopilot (presumably) to make several turns and then fly the aircraft into the southern Indian ocean.
People have advanced many ideas about MH370. It isn't immediately obvious that this idea fits what is known any better than many of the other ideas.

Based on this list of high-flying birds, there are only two that seem to have any possibility of being present in the area at that altitude at the time. These are the common crane and the bar-headed goose.
The regulations on airliner windscreens say that they must not let a 4 lb bird penetrate at cruise speed at sea level.
The common crane weighs 10 lb on average, and the bar-headed goose 5.5 lb on average.
This means that the plane could encounter a bird over twice as heavy as designed for, at airspeeds almost twice as much as designed for. This could certainly cause the windsheild to fail, resulting in decompression.
An aircraft windshield has failed at altitude before, though for a different reason. Despite sucking one pilot partially out of the cockpit, the remaining pilot was able to land the aircraft safely.
In conclusion, it is possible, but from experience highly unlikely, that the aircraft hit a bird at cruise altitude. If a bird penetrated the windshield (or even the nose), it could have damaged controls in the cockpit.
Of course, it could also have been a meteor. But events like this are so unlikely that they are really not considered unless there is more evidence to support them. So we will have to wait and see what is found.
Considering how unlikely this scenario is, there are two possibilities here:
The bird caused the initial deviations. Maybe the bird knocked out communications, but the pilots were able to maintain partial control, explaining the further deviations. It's unclear why they would climb back up to cruise altitude unpressurized though.
The bird caused the final loss. The flight deviated as observed for unknown reasons, and started cruising south. At some point between there and fuel exhaustion, it hit the bird, resulting in loss of control.

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Can a passenger realistically replace suddenly incapacitated pilots?
Yes, this is a question from the movies. Assume that the plane is in flight and in perfect mechanical conditions. However, all the pilots onboard are suddenly incapacitated.
Can a passenger without any previous flight experience realistically save the plane and take it to a safe landing only by remote radio help?

I remember it actually happened on a GA flight where the pilot died in flight and the passenger had no previous experience and succesfully landed at its third (?) attempt. But I cannot find the reference.

@Federico Such stories appear in the news from time to time.

possible duplicate of How can passengers help in the cockpit in an in-flight aviational crisis?

On a commercial passenger plane, if the pilots pass out, you can't get into the cockpit because it's locked from the inside...

@Federico is this what you're thinking of?

@fooot I never heard of that one specifically, but apparently it is more "common" than I thought.

When I was in flight school my instructor told me -- now a trained private pilot -- that if that happened: "You might be able to land the plane but it would probably never fly again."

Since I can not post an answer, let me add my opinion in a comment: As long as one is smart enough to locate the operations manual and contact ATC, landing a modern commercial jet on an airport with the necessary ILS equipment should be a piece of cake thanks to autoland. Even without it, landing a functional aeroplane in good weather on a long runway is not rocket science. It is very easy. The times when pilots really need their experience and earn their salary is in emergency or bad weather. I suspect that even the brightest without experience would not be able to deal with strong crosswind.

Depends of the passenger is a pilot

"Even without it, landing a functional aeroplane in good weather on a long runway is not rocket science. It is very easy." Not to someone who's never done it before... I wouldn't even call it 'easy' on your first time with a CFI in the seat beside you.

She had some experience with training, but no license, and an experienced pilot in close formation. Read about it in Sport Aviation

Mayday: The Passenger Who Landed a Plane

Mythbusters tried this - they performed significantly better with a trained instructor talking them down, and I think managed to land the plane without death. On the other hand, pushing the autopilot button worked even better :)

Helios Airways Flight 522 case:failed

In the Mythbusters test: did the instructor talk to them ONLY OVER THE RADIO as would happen in real life?  Or did the instructor stand behind and talk to them?

See https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25260

@Him That is a poor example due to hyporexia he was suffering

@Him, in the Helios 222 case the flight attendant stepping in to try and save the flight faced two huge challenges: 1) establishing communications (sorting out the comms system that is almost certainly way more complex than that seen as a private pilot), and 2) dealing with an engine out due to fuel exhaustion.

There's a decent chance that a commercial airliner will have at least one licensed pilot on board. UA232 had an expert onboard who proved incredibly useful as the flight crew fought to control the plane.

@Fattie The instructor was in the control booth while Jamie and Adam took turns solo in the simulator. Here is a brief run through of the episode and here is a YouTube link of the full episode.

I guess this is a secret dream of many of you here: You sit on a scheduled flight, and hear in the PA system: "Both our pilots just passed out. Any volunteers to take over their duties?"
Won't happen.
Think of what would happen next: Panic! The volunteers won't even make it to the cockpit. All cabin crew are focussed to keep the cabin calm, so this announcement will never be made.
Instead, one of the cabin crew will take over. That is part of their duties, actually, and some airlines even give them basic training so they have a fair chance when they are in contact with someone on the ground who can talk them through all steps.

Edit: Thanks to some commenters for pointing out that the question also includes GA traffic. Yes, I did not cover this. Generally, I think a passenger should have an easier time to take over, when he/she is sitting already in the right seat. He/she could watch the pilot before and has a full set of controls available. GA planes move much more slowly, so things happen at a slower pace and much less kinetic energy is involved if the touchdown is not perfect. Much depends on the constitution of the new pilot: Some people will simply panic and not be able to follow even the best remote help. But if they keep their cool, a good landing (meaning one you can walk away from) should be possible.
I had been in the right seat of a Lancair once and the pilot turned the plane over to me on final. The Lancair was so sensitive in pitch that I porpoised the aircraft - I first had to get adjusted. So even a pilot in a new type might not be able to land it immediately when he gets to fly it first time on short final!

and there might well be a colleague on board who's positioning or on a staff discount ticket, and they'd know about that and quietly approach him/her :)

Secret? My kids don't even ask me what I dream about any more. You've ruined it! Now I might have to dream about just fixing something. Tell me, do airline pilots dream about writing software perchance?

This answer does not seem to address the question at all.

@Relaxed: Do I need to spell it out? The answer is no, obviously, but not for the reason you seem to expect.

@PeterKämpf No, you just explained that you can't imagine a situation in which a passenger would have to do it. It's probably true but the question is: What if it did happen nonetheless? It does not seem too complicated to understand…

@Relaxed: So commercial air travel just happens in my imagination? Interesting ...

@PeterKämpf Who said that? Are you really unable to comprehend my point? You did seem quite comfortable answering another what-if question that could just as well be dismissed in a similar way…

@Relaxed: Of course I get your point, but you seem to have a hard time to accept that it is totally irrelevant. A straight answer would be full of ifs and whens and can not be definite - the result would completely depend on the nature of the person taking the controls. Some can do it, most will fail. Will you now stop pestering me?

@PeterKämpf I don't have any trouble “accepting” your opinion but it's really tangential to the issue. I am just pointing out that your remarks are at best a comment, not an answer. They simply do not address the question which I, for one, still find interesting and no less answerable than the one you choose to answer (and I am not alone, cf. the other answer and votes).

I was a bit troubled by your condescending and disingenuous response to what was a rather simple point, intended to give you an opportunity to improve your answer. But if you do realize that you have not addressed the question and are not interested in doing so, then that's fine too. It's your pretending that you did that was annoying.

The question is not limited to scheduled flight

"All the pilots are suddenly incapacitated" suggests it's not just a little Cessna.

As a practical matter, it sounds like it'd be pretty tough to pull an unconscious pilot out of their seat, especially because their legs will be caught under the ... (What do you call that thing? The dashboard?)

@raptortech97: ... panel, short for instrument panel. I agree, that would be hard to pull off. In my desperation I would lean over the pilot from behind and at least try to grab throttle and stick. Radio communication would be hard that way ...

Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXpFznXb_vI#t=37s

If we understand "all pilots" in a sense that implies "more than one," it also implies "more than just the two sitting at the controls" (otherwise it would be "both pilots"). How about we interpret this as: everyone who was expected to be able to fly the plane (pilot, copilot, other crew, and any other pilots on board) is incapacitated, leaving only untrained people capable of working the controls. Extremely unlikely, but theoretically possible.

@DavidK then you're screwed, period. Especially if you also exclude anyone who ever flew an aircraft but didn't continue on to certification... Ain't gonna happen, especially as the flight deck door would be locked from the inside :)

@jwenting OK, not so suddenly that they don't have time to unlock the door. Some answers have addressed the question at this level. Unless you are able to communicate with ATC, it is a bleak scenario in a large plane.

Just to point out, it HAS happened: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-24450534
Ok, from what I can tell it's likely a small aircraft (there were only two people on board). And a small craft is almost certainly a world of difference from a commercial liner (I'm no pilot). But I just wanted to provide a concrete example of this actually happening.

That is quite a bold statement, I would say. There are ways to investigate if there is a pilot on board discreetly and increase the chances if the result is positive. Given how exciting aviation is and how many nerds it attracts, I would not be so unimaginative.

"Think of what would happen next: Panic!" That's why you assure them: "There is no reason to panic. Now, it is true that one of the crew members is ill... slightly ill. But the other two pilots... they're just fine. They're at the controls flying the plane... free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment."

There are many even scheduled and IFR flights where you are not (often) isolated from the pilot cabin. E.g. in small aircraft like L-410 or DHC-6. But of course, it is improbable, that both pilots would eat a bad fish as in the Hailey's Zero Hour!.

Do you have a source for your claim that an FA would actually try to land the plane? I find that extremely unlikely except on the (also extremely unlikely) chance that one of the FAs actually is a pilot. Even then, they'd probably still ask if there were any pilots on board, if for no other reason than to have a trained pilot in the right seat, too. A source for airlines giving FAs flight training would also be interesting. Everything I've heard before contradicts that that actually happens, at least to any extent meaningful for landing the plane.

@HaroldCavendish: I have this first hand from experienced flight attendants. Trust me, they were very clear on this. It will not happen.

@reirab: Sorry, no hard source. I think I have heard it from a Lufthansa FA who said that they can take simulator hours. And we both know it does not take a trained pilot to auto land a plane, just knowing which buttons to press.

@PeterKämpf That's cool that they can take simulator hours. Sounds like a nice job perk. As far as FAs never asking for pilots on board, though, it actually has happened. I can think of at least two instances where a pilot has become ill and the FAs asked for pilots on board. Each time, though, the remaining pilot was fine and the passenger just helped with radio comm, reading checklists, etc. One of the passengers was a USAF B-1 pilot.

This is simply wrong. As stated in my answer, I talked to a senior instructor at American and he said that the crew would ask for experienced pilots in the unlikely case that all the crew's pilots were incapacitated.

@TylerDurden: Maybe simply wrong for American. I can assure you that other airlines have different procedures. Maybe this is a reason to fly American, perhaps?

@PeterKämpf Assure me according to what? Who even are you and what is your evidence of these so-called "policies" that a steward not ask for a pilot in the event of the incapacitation of the flight crew?

And yet, when the captain of UA1637 on 30 Dec 2013 suffered myocardial infarction mid-flight, the crew put out a call for "any non-revenue pilots on-board", which was answered by a passenger who happened to be a USAF pilot.  So it seems this answer is disproved by reality?

@eggyal: You did notice that the plane was not flown by the B-1 pilot but the copilot, did you? That copilot would had been perfectly able to land the plane herself, without a second pilot. I do not know United procedures but suspect that what she did is not recommended. Other airlines are more clear and will not allow this to happen.

@PeterKämpf:  yes, indeed I did notice that.  My point was just that airlines do sometimes put out a call for a pilot.  LH403 on 19 Nov 2012 is another example (see overdramatised reporting from the Daily Mail).

My point merely being that, whatever their training, cabin crew faced with incapacitated flight crew sometimes in practice still put out calls for pilots to make themselves known, so “won’t happen” appears (at least to my mind) to be incorrect.

Also, in neither of those cases are there any reports of those calls inducing panic in the passengers.  Sure, in those cases there was still a capable member of flight crew in control; but the passengers weren’t to know that (and indeed they need not know that all flight crew are incapacitated if the call came in those circumstances—to them, the situation would be indistinguishable from these cases).

Actually, this theory has been tested a few times in simulators and small aircrafts with little twists here and there.
Take a look at this video: Amateur Trying to Land Airbus A320 from 2500 Altitude
Assuming you can get to the controls:
This may be possible, but I believe it is very unlikely to be successful. Based on all the videos I see online, people attempting to do it, fail a few times before they get it right. In the video (linked above), she crashed like five times before she managed it like shown in the video. Also, If you don't have autoland and sit in a big, heavy aircraft, the chances are very slim.
I really can't say yes or no to this question. There are a ton of factors that counts to decide whenever this is possible or not. For example weather, type of aircraft, weight of aircraft, self-taught experience with the airplane, and a big load of confidence (especially if you have never seen a cockpit before). If the plane has ILS systems with full Auto-landing options, I'd say your chances are better assuming you know how to program it, or get instructions from air-traffic controllers.
So all in all, you are likely to survive, but the plane may be badly damaged on touchdown.

Here are a few more interesting (not directly relevant) examples:

A man learns how to fly a real 737 in just one month. (My personal favorite)
A private pilot takes over the controls of a Embraer 190 in mid-flight
A pilot with no real-life flying hours (only flight simulation hours) takes the controls of a real Cessna 172.

I suppose it also depends on what you define as a "safe" (successful) landing -- If you thunk the thing down blow out the tires and run off the side of the runway into a ditch but nobody is seriously hurt or killed I'd call that a success in some situations :)

@voretaq7 as the old saying goes, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

To be fair, I would not deem the woman fit for driving my car. If they replaced her with an engineer or perhaps a physicist – generally someone with advanced understanding of aviation and aeroplanes, I am sure the performance would be more impressive.

@HaroldCavendish I'm an engineer who worked for a while at a USAF airframe, jet engine, and rocket motor wind tunnel testing facility. Suffice it to say that I'm reasonably familiar with aerodynamics. There's no way on Earth I'd have been able to land a heavy jet in real life on the first try with no real training. Landing a Piper Cherokee is hard enough when you've never done it before, even with a CFI sitting in the right seat. Even with the flying experience I have now, I'd be demanding to get someone on the radio who could tell me how to set up the autoland.

"self-taught experience with the airplane" If we're talking about passenger jets, I can't say I've met many people with self-taught experience in a passenger jet. That's a little outside the budget of most people... And, no, FS X doesn't count for much other than maybe helping you understand how to use the radios to call for help and understand how to read the instruments. "or get instructions from air-traffic controllers." I think you'd probably want them to get you an actual captain for that type. Controllers would only know marginally more about it that you would.

@reirab Why would simulator training on MSFS for a jet airliner not be good enough?

@Cloud The PC simulators aren't great for simulating the handling of the aircraft, especially with the default models. The flare and touchdown are quite different in real life. You also don't get any of the 'feel' when you're sitting at a desk that's not moving. Furthermore, many of the controls are not enabled at all. A sim can be useful for figuring out the basic controls (and radios!) but its usefulness for learning actual visual hand flying is limited. Also, unless you have some serious mods, it doesn't really simulate the FMS at all, let alone things like autoland.

@Cloud FS X also lets you get away with a lot of things that in real life would have results like "your wings just separated" or "you just ripped off some flight control surfaces" or "you just stalled and died" or "you just slammed into the ground at an attitude and velocity that would result in the aircraft breaking apart." For a more full answer, you might want to ask that as a separate question.

Mythbusters tested this. They each tried once without guidance and failed miserably.  Then they had a veteran ATC assist them and they both landed successfully.  So the experiment was tainted just a bit since they got a practice run, but it doesn't seem like they really learned anything from that practice run (they didn't even know what all of the controls did, and IIRC one of them didn't even manage to get the landing gear out), so for all intents and purposes they were doing it for the first time.
More importantly, after having their fun in the simulator, the show notes that all modern commercial jets are equipped with autoland, so all the passenger would need to do is program it, with instructions from ATC.  ATC may even be able to program it remotely on current aircraft.

For the case of a small aircraft without such fancy equipment, the answer is still yes.  There's a saying in aviation: "A good landing is one where you can walk away.  A great landing is one where you can use the plane again."  If you lower your expectations about what a "landing" entails, it's not too hard to land a small prop plane.  They can travel surprisingly slowly and don't require much runway length (so you could burn half the runway just trying to get lined up and level and still be fine).  Depending on the conditions, a better option might be to leave the landing gear up and skid it into an empty field.  With ATC guidance, this is really not too hard.

Yeah.  To land a plane you really need only one skill--being able to operate the radio.  Talkdowns usually work.  I've even heard of a course for spouses of GA pilots that's basic familiarization plus emphasis on the radio.  While someone having to take the controls on a big bird is AFIAK unheard of GA pilots do occasionally suffer strokes or heart attacks.

and of course the "ATC" was expecting the situation, and no doubt everyone had practiced. They're special effect guys in Hollywood after all.

I don't know I'd be happy knowing that some dude on the ground miles away from the plane can configure the autopilot on my plane without a connection. I mean, if ATC can do it through radio, what is stopping a terrorist or other person with malicious intent from doing it?

@Nzall In fairness, even being able to remotely program autoland with no chance of a pilot override would at worst lead to a landing at an unintended autoland-capable airport. Annoying for the people involved both in the aircraft and on the ground, yes. Certainly costly for the airline. But a really big deal? Probably not. Pilots are already supposed to monitor the flight continuously in case the autopilot disengages for some reason, and it would be hard to make the autopilot do anything truly dangerous in the short amount of time before the pilots would disengage it and take over control.

@MichaelKjörling This entire question is about incapacitated pilots. I'm fairly sure that if the pilots are truly incapacitated, a malicious actor with access to the autopilot from the ground won't really have "land at a different airport" in mind. More likely something like "crash this plane into a concert".

ATC or the airline can uplink clearances and to a certain extent routes, respectively, but button-pressing is required on board to make the aircraft fly what’s uplinked. Therefore, the full remote takeover doesn’t work.

For a completely untrained person it would be hard and would take hours of practice, so a lot would depend how much fuel the plane had.
In theory it is possible, as long as you have a long runway, because you can land it on a really shallow glide slope, which takes a lot of potential problems out the equation. As long as the guy has it lined up right, configured correctly and is going the right speed, the plane will more or less land itself. It's just a question of how many times he has to go around before he lines it up right.
Don't forget the Barefoot Bandit who stole a bunch of planes and "landed" them multiple times successfully using only the information in the operator's manual. Not pretty landings, but, hey, he landed and walked away each time.
------------------- ** FOLLOW UP **
I asked a senior pilot/instructor/examiner at American about this. He said the following:
(1) Stewards are not trained to take over in the event of such an emergency
(2) On many flights there are pilots flying in a jump seat or making a transit and these could take over if they are present.
(3) In the unlikely event that the crew was incapacitated and there was no other regular pilot on board, the flight attendants would ask among the passengers if anyone has a pilot's license. In this situation the disadvantages of "inducing panic" would be irrelevant compared to the value of having an experienced pilot flying the plane.
(4) If an untrained person had to fly the plane, it could probably be done successfully in most cases using the automatic features of modern commercial carriers.

+1 for the follow up. I'd much rather have a passenger with a pilot's license flying the aircraft than an FA. Most FAs know exactly nothing about flying an airplane other than what the flight deck looks like.

This is my theory - a GA pilot should have at least a chance of crashing the aircraft softly enough that most on board survive... which sounds bad, until you remember that the alternative is probably a massive crash. The really interesting one would be a non-pilot with Flight Simulator experience

Auto landing, ok, but how about braking? Does the auto pilot brake as well? I suppose perfect landing does not suffice, if you end up going 200 km/h on land and not knowing how to stop.

@Tero Lahinen Planes have auto-brakes but like everything else they need to be configured in order to work. Eg. if the runway is wet/day etc.

OP is asking if it’s POSSIBLE, not if it’s likely.
To answer your question YES it’s possible. Actually it would be fairly “easy,” if you were talking on the radio to someone from that airline, who knows the aircraft type, layout, and systems.

First you would need to be able to talk to a controller.
In order to do this, you would need to know that you can’t just start talking into the microphone. When you do this and the aircraft has a interphone lock switch, you would likely hear your own voice, and so you would think the air traffic controller (ATC) would be able to hear you. This is false as you have to “toggle” the switch. My aircraft type (747) has 3 such switches: one next to the radio, one on the steering column, and one on the hand microphone. The two on the radios and steering column have two settings, one is for the interphone and one is for the radio. So you would have to switch it in the right way as well.
Once you actually talk to ATC, you would possibly be connected to someone from the airline who knows the exact layout of the panels, as each airline can order different configurations and extra options etc. Most of the primary flight displays are usually the same, but there are minor differences.
They would talk you through setting up the aircraft for a fully automated landing. This would include:

descending and navigating to a location where you could “attach the aircraft systems to the runway landing system” — intercept heading for an ILS (instrument landing system) approach
setting up the autopilot and FMS (flight management systems) for that approach
set the autobrakes etc.

This would require a lot of patience and time, but I do think it is possible, once the aircraft has landed it would automatically brake to a full stop and keep rollout guidance (stay on the runway).
If any extra abnormality occurs it would be highly unlikely the person would be able to solve that
I think the most important factor here is time, patience and the ability for the passenger to listen and not panic. Time = fuel, so that’s always of the utmost importance.
Given it happens more than 100 NM (nautical miles) away from the airport you would land on you would have to switch multiple times from ATC centers. Just hope you would be able to do that and get in contact with the new center. So let’s hope we’re all wise enough to have you talk on 121.5 (international emergency frequency) and stay there.

Also, if this happens over, for instance, the ocean you might be talking on HF, very bad radio quality and most probably not the radio which is selected at that time, so getting in contact with ATC might prove difficult.
As for getting into the cockpit, with a bit of ingenuity or help that should be fairly straightforward, even with all the new cockpit doors etc.
If you’re smart, you would call the airline with a credit card phone from the cabin first if absolutely no one including stewardesses, who don’t know how to operate the radios etc.,  knows what to do.

"you would call the airline with a credit card phone from the cabin first" "You don't know me; I'm aboard your flight from London to New York and both our cockpit crew just passed out and nobody but me knows what to do. Please transfer me immediately to someone who can help us." Somehow I can't quite see the person at the switchboard (that is assuming that you can get to a human being in a reasonable amount of time in the first place, as opposed to a touch-tone menu) quite believing that... it's probably going to take some precious time just to convince them that you are telling the truth.

Somebody calm and with radio communication could land an airliner.
They would need to be able to use the Mode Control Panel, possibly the FMS, perform an ILS capture (likely controlled entirely by the STAR in the FMS), autobrake settings and be able to control flap settings and gear.
If in the cruise, the flight management computer (FMC) could fly from TOD down to a long final with ILS capture, flap retraction, drop the gear and maximum autobrakes using flight level change (FLCH) and speed control.
All this could be explained over the radio.

I came across this story of a husband and wife enjoying a flight on a GA plane, when the husband died of a heart attack. The wife sought help on the radio, a flight instructor heard it, jumped in a plane and went looking for her. She could walk away from the landing.
So the answer is a definite Yes, it has happened.

An interesting question. I am fairly certain that a modern figther jet would be a lot easier to land than a typical airliner, due to not having quite as much automation.
I worked with a simulator for a fighter jet and at least one pilot thought we (the IT guys working on the sim) would be able to land the real plane if it came to that.
On the other hand, when we had random clients try landing the sim when flying it for the first time, it almost always worked when someone talked them down, standing by their side, using ILS. You don't have that luxury in a real plane: nobody can point to the controls for example. If people would have tried on their own, I think fewer than 1 in 5 would have made it. I mean with no help even from the radio, hence no glide-slope to guide the landing.
You just need to have a feeling for the touchdown, and the only way to get that is practice. Which in this case there is none! Jet airliners are also a lot less forgiving than a smaller plane due to all that inertia/weight, so to be honest I think a controlled crash is the likely best outcome.

Let's assume physical access to the cockpit is not an obstacle (flight attendant or someone has duplicate key or access code; a crowbar can be obtained; or otherwise a brute force way to get in can be devised.)
I'm going to say the answer to the question is as follows:
If a passenger has never flown a plane or played with a flight simulator, then there's a very slim chance they will successfully land the plane. There has to be some kind of working knowledge of how aircraft work. This knowledge is crucial and simply can't be imparted by someone trying to talk them through it over the radio. (Can a non-technical passenger even figure out how to use the radio and establish communication with a control tower? Probably not. )
However, if a passenger has played with flight simulators, the probability of success rises greatly. In other words, now it's actually in the "tens of percent" (10%, 20%, 30%) versus hundredths of percentile (0.001%). That's because flight simulators are pretty accurate representations of real flying, and in order to use a flight simulator successfully, you actually have to first learn the fundamentals of how airplanes work (gliding, stalling, dealing with wind, how to line up for the runway, etc).
And if a passenger has piloted some sort of real aircraft, then it increases the chances a bit more, although probably not a huge amount compared to the simulator-only case. At this point, it is a matter of the passenger learning where the minimum essential controls are, how to take the plane off autopilot if that's what's needed. Knowing which are the essential controls and ignoring the rest of the control panel. And knowing how to navigate to the nearest airstrip. Assuming this information can be imparted by someone (control tower people over the radio), then I would say there's a 95% chance of making it to the airstrip and maybe a 50% chance of successful landing. As someone else mentioned, the touchdown is the crucial moment. Someone who has landed a single engine prop isn't going to know how a 737 feels.

When I first read the question, I thought, "sure, if you're an ex-USAF pilot like I am, not a problem" (every time I fly on an airline, that fantasy occurs to me lol). But then I saw that the question was caveated with "no previous flight experience". Oh well :)
I think the odds would be 50-50 at best whether someone with absolutely no flight experience could land a modern jet airliner without crashing, even with the absolute best radio instructions possible. Maybe even worse odds than that.

Are autoland system that poor or difficult to operate?

@Taemyr Poor? No; they're quite good at what they're designed to do. Difficult to operate? Yes. In addition to knowing how to program it, you also have to know what to program it to do, which a non-pilot would have very little chance of knowing.

I would suggest to use a mobile phone to call a police - that much most of people can easily do. The police should tell the phone number to contact the airport. From there, it may be possible to receive professional instructions how use the radio on the plane, and further professional instructions that I believe should at least reduce the number of casualties. Even assuming the most hopeless scenario, even crashing in remote area away from houses is already something. Maybe it is possible to do something better in comparison to that.
I do not know, maybe at least in some cases an airport may even tell the code to unlock the door. The airport would see that legitimate pilots are no longer responding to the radio calls, the plane is not following the planned path.
Mobile phones generally work from the airplane, while it may be better slow down and descend below cruising altitude. This is probably easier than to land. Also, as noted by @DJZorrow, it may be built - in passenger phones on a plane that are more likely to work.
In general, with 200+ seats in the airliner, there is a non-zero possibility that an ATP that is (or has been) rated for the type is flying as a passenger. Because of that, I think, some attempt to recruit able passengers should be made rather than just leaving controls unattended.

Mobie phones are unlikely to work in the airplane as the signal from the ground antennas won't reach the altitude passenger planes normally operate at. Unless you have an on-board phone, a satellite phone or if the plane is flying lower than normal.

Have you looked into the reference provided?

Indeed I did :)

In October 2013, England, 77 year old complete novice John Wildey took over control after his friend pilot of a Cessna 172 lost consciousness, and successfully landed the plane.
https://www.flyingmag.com/technique/accidents/passenger-lands-cessna-172-skyhawk-after-pilot-incapacitated
If a 77 year old could do it, it gives us hope.

The answer depends on at least four variables:

Is the plane on autopilot at the moment?
Does the passenger have any theoretical knowledge of that type of an airplane?
Does the passenger have any computer flight simulator experience?
Does "remote radio help" mean "ATC with no pilot training" or "another pilot who knows that type of an airplane"?

There are 16 possible combinations of these variables, so theoretically 16 different answers are possible.
However, in my opinion, if the airplane is not on autopilot at the time the passenger realizes everybody else is incapacitated, the passenger will be incapacitated (dead) too in a matter of minutes or seconds, so we can safely eliminate the first variable. With three remaining variables and an assumption that the plane was on autopilot, eight different answers are possible, ranging from "extremely unlikely" in case all three variables are in the negative to "very likely" when they are in the affirmative. Also note that the question presumes that the passenger can quickly figure out how to use the radio and that he already knows the emergency frequency.
My short answer is: without theoretical preparation--no way. The passenger will not be able to even turn on radio.

I'm not an expert on this myself, however a former colleague of mine had to do with optimizing the ergonomics of the workplace of German national flight control and they told him that today, the autopilot can fully control an aircraft, including take-off and landing. So all you need to do is basically dial in the coordinates of the airport. And this can be explained over radio. So in case you can operate the radio, you'd probably have quite a good chance of getting that thing down. After that, you could basically get back to your seat and wait until you're down.
The people at flight control were actually pretty humorous and were kidding like: "Why do we even need pilots if these things can fly on their own?" - "Psst! Not too loud! Actually we don't need pilots. ;-)"
Of course that's not true and in case a big aircraft were to come down with autopilot, it would definitely be a rough landing, they'd probably clear the entire airport just in case and the aircraft may even take a bit of damage, but in > 95 % of all cases, all passengers would get down unharmed.
At least that's what I heard. Like I said I have no clue myself, so it may be complete bullsh*t. And of course it's gonna be a lot different for smaller machines (sports planes) which don't have this kind of equipment and will probably be a lot harder to successfully land.

Regarding the second-to-last paragraph: Hundreds (at least) of airliners autoland every day. It's definitely not a rough landing and the percentage that result in no passengers getting harmed is currently somewhere around 100%. I'm not familiar with any accidents in which an autoland system has landed poorly enough to injure anyone, but it's possible that it has happened at some point. Certainly, far more instances exist where a landing has resulted in injuries as a result of pilot error.

Auto-land is an option. The thing is though, auto-land is not 100% guaranteed to work. Pilots are supposed to be very vigilant and take over if the automation fails. In that case a novice would have no chance to save the plane.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Are there known cases of an airline pilot's becoming incapacitated, while in command of the aircraft, during a critical flight phase?
Are there any reported cases in which the Pilot Flying of an airliner has become incapacitated during a critical phase of flight, so that the Pilot Monitoring has had to intervene to prevent a disaster?
By critical phases of flight, I mean during takeoff, approach, or landing.

Here are a couple of examples from two studies that have a lot more detail and background information on pilot incapacitation in general.
From an ATSB study:

After a normal touchdown, the first officer became unconscious at the
  flight controls and the aircraft began to veer to the right of the
  centreline. The captain took control of the aircraft to return to the
  centreline and completed the landing

From an FAA study:

A 45-year-old B-737 first officer experiencing an alcohol withdrawal
  seizure suddenly screamed, extended his arms up rigidly, pushed full
  right rudder, and slumped over the yoke during an approach. The
  aircraft descended to 1,000 feet above ground level in an
  uncoordinated turn to 25 degrees angle of bank before flight
  attendants could pull the first officer off the controls, allowing the
  captain to recover the airplane

Wait, so this incident happened because the FO wasn't drunk enough?


text:
Does pilot monitoring have authority to go around in exceptional circumstances?
Let's say the captain is acting as the pilot flying(PF) and the first officer the pilot monitoring(PM) in a commercial jet. They are shooting an ILS to their destination airport but the approach is so unstable that the first officer shouts "go around, go around" after passing minimum. But the captain ignores him and wouldn't balk the landing.
In this situation, does the first officer have the authority to take the controls from the captain by shouting "my controls" and go around? What about if their roles are switched? That is, what if the captain was the PM and the first officer the PF? Is the captain allowed to overide the first officer's decision to continue and initiate a go-around? I think this question can be better answered by commercial or airline pilots because I believe this is determined by company SOPs rather than FAR or ICAO rules. If so, are there any airlines that render the PM the authority to go around in defiance of the PF's decision under certain circumstances, like when the PM firmly believes the plane will very likely crash if an immediate balked landing is not initiated?

The captain is the captain, so when he says "go around" then the PF needs to initiate the go-around.  If the FO doesn't initiate the go-around as directed, then the captain can (at that time as at essentially any other time he sees it necessary) take over control of the aircraft.  That's the captain's authority and it's pretty clear.
The other case is slightly less clear, but only slightly.
Most operations probably have a directive along the lines that the PF is required to go around when the PM so directs.  So if the captain is flying and the FO directs a go-around, what the captain/PF should do is perfectly clear.  If he doesn't do so, the next step is probably spelled out in the operations manual; probably something along the lines of, repeat the directive once, then assume incapacitation and take over the controls to execute the go-around.
The really bad case would be, the captain is intent on landing regardless and the FO believes that they're about to crash.  At that point, the question (really for both pilots) becomes, are you sufficiently sure of your position that fighting for the controls close to the ground is less dangerous than doing what the other pilot wants?  If we're somehow down to our last minutes of fuel & the copilot wants to go around because a dog ran onto the runway, a reasonable captain would probably overrule him and land anyway.  If the captain is so intent on landing that doesn't see the aircraft on the runway that he's about to  land on top of, a reasonable copilot might push the throttles forward like his life depends on it.
If you've reached the point where "go around" "go around" "I have the aircraft, go around thrust" hasn't worked, you've left the realm of most manuals.  The implicit assumption is that an incapacitated PF isn't going to have the capacity to fight you for the controls; I doubt very many operations manuals devote much space to the nightmare case of wrestling for the controls against a maniac determined to do something awful.  Thankfully, such scenarios are almost entirely the stuff of imagination -- commercial flight is essentially the safest form of transportation ever known to mankind.  That remains true even though the one in (very literally) millions of flights where something does go horribly wrong (Germanwings crash into the Alps, etc) gets extraordinary publicity.

And the Germanwings flight wasn't a controls-wrestling situation, he was alone in the room.

Actually, I had these accidents in mind: http://www.code7700.com/accident_korean_air_2033.htm and https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/27/ntsb-southwest-nose-landing-laguardia/30736777/

By the way, I think I read somewhere that in some airlines the SOP is that both pilots have their hand on the throttle during takeoff and landing, so that both can initiate an abort/go-around immediately without having to announce it, and with the other pilot immediately feeling it without the need for (verbal) communication. But that's a different scenario.

@JörgWMittag Some airlines may do that, but it's far from universal. I've never heard of it, and it sounds ill-advised to me. At the airline level, ONE pilot has hands/feet on the controls at a time, only. Besides, in many places, ONLY the captain can abort a takeoff. (Separate, long-ish discussion why that case is different from "either pilot can direct a go-around".)

Reminds of this joke, and it's variations:  I had a friend that was a pilot, and he had one student that always made perfect landings. He was very good at waiting until the last moment to pull up and land perfectly. My friend asked him what was his technique and he replied "I just point the plane down at the runway and when you rear up in your seat and turn white that's when I pull the stick back".


text:
Does the F-4E Phantom II have a weather radar?
Here's the cockpit of the F-4E:

The Main Panel NO7 says "Radar Scope" and when you put your mouse cursor on that "magician globe", the X-Plane 8.15 tooltip says "Weather Radar". So, what is that overly "oversized weather radar scope"?

Related? AN/APQ-120

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is based on a video game.

@RalphJ Whether the F-4 has a weather radar does not seem off-topic, regardless of what prompted the question. Voting to leave open.

@RalphJ I am not asking anything about the F4 In the X-Plane ! I am asking if F4E P2 have an "weather radar" in the real life !

The F-4 radar was a low PRF pulse radar, designed to search for, acquire, and track other airborne aircraft, and then provide guidance for Aim-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles. It also had a ground mapping capability, and a capability to detect and display severe weather, but it was primarily designed for air-to-air combat.
Later models of the F-4 had an more modern radar, (installed in the German F-4F for example) which was a high PRF pulse Doppler system, and had improved capabilities, but I don't know whether they still had a weather mapping capability. I would be surprised if they did not.


text:
How did the AAIB assist in locating MH370?
I saw on news that the AAIB helped to locate the missing MH370 flight, saying that it ended up in Indian Ocean, with the help of a whole new technology.
I was wondering what kind of "new technology" it was?

More information about the news source would be helpful.

As mentioned in some of the answers below, the satellite is not precisely geostationary, but moves a small amount relative to a fixed point on the ground in a well understood 24 hour pattern. Thus, for example, if at a given time it was moving towards a ping on the northern route, it would be moving away from one one the southern route. This would result in a pattern of doppler shifts that would allow the two routes to be distinguished.

MH370 hasn’t been located. Only a few washed up bits have been found. The location of it (somewhere in the South Indian Ocean) is not known. You mean....trying to locate.

The following statement has just been released today by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, in relation to the AAIB:

This evening I was briefed by representatives from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). They informed me that Inmarsat, the UK company that provided the satellite data which indicated the northern and southern corridors, has been performing further calculations on the data. Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370's flight path.
Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.
This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
We will be holding a press conference tomorrow with further details. In the meantime, we wanted to inform you of this new development at the earliest opportunity. We share this information out of a commitment to openness and respect for the families, two principles which have guided this investigation.
Malaysia Airlines have already spoken to the families of the passengers and crew to inform them of this development. For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking; I know this news must be harder still. I urge the media to respect their privacy, and to allow them the space they need at this difficult time.

It's not a "new technology" per se, but a new form of analysis. You might have heard recently that the aircraft responded to hourly "pings" from a satellite:

British satellite company Inmarsat immediately began doing calculations based on a series of hourly "pings," as the plane and one of the company's satellites tried to communicate with each other.
Triangulating those pings seems to have given Inmarsat a pretty good idea of where the plane went, along one of two routes, to the north and to the south.

Here is some further information:

About three hours after Flight MH370 went missing, Inmarsat, a British-based satellite company, began tracking the Boeing 777 through an on-board data system called Aero Classic. Every hour, Inmarsat's satellites would try to communicate with the aircraft, pinging it with a computerized question asking, in effect, "Are you there?"
For several hours, Flight MH370 responded "Yes, I am," notifying engineers on the ground with a so-called handshake that the plane was still powered up.
Using that series of pings, Inmarsat engineers and other analysts were able to piece together two broad, arcing regions where the plane could have been located when it last communicated with the satellite.
"Our engineers looked at the time between the handshakes, and they realized that the object wasn't stationary under a satellite but moving away from it," Christopher McLaughlin, senior vice president of Inmarsat, said Thursday. "Over time, the engineers here recognized that there were a number of data points and that it had flown for several hours. We didn’t know if it was on the northern or southern corridor."

More information on how Inmarsat determined MH370 flew along the Southern corridor specifically, will likely be released tomorrow at the press conference (as mentioned in Najib Razak's statement), which I gather is the information you're looking for.

Good answer, +1. But the Washington Post's description of the process as "triangulating those pings" seems like journalistic error (or perhaps laziness). Neither triangulation nor trilateration are useful for data from a single geostationary satellite.

From information that I saw they used the Doppler effect to estimate the location http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10719304/How-British-satellite-company-Inmarsat-tracked-down-MH370.html

I've only seen the "last known position arcs" published (as above). According to the material here, they also have hourly arcs? Are those published anywhere? Could they tell anything about the speed and course?

Regarding the southern/northern arc - the decision to search the southern corridor over (or more than) the northern might be informed by a different source than Inmarsat. For example, after analysis of the Radar coverage of the countries passed over - I imagine that it would be difficult (but not impossible) for the aircraft to have entered China's airspace without being noticed.

Like most geostationary satellites, Inmarsat 3-F1 is not in a truly fixed orbit relative to the earth: it drifts a few degrees north and south.  Knowing this, and more importantly the speed it is drifting north or south, lets them refine their already very good doppler measurements - if you assume the northern path, you have to assume MH370 had constantly varying airspeed - if you assume the southern route, the airspeed comes out constant.

Apparently the satellite is not exactly geostationary but describes a small 8 figure over a roughly 24 hour cycle, and it is known which direction it is moving towards at any given time. I think it is in fact the Doppler effect of the combined satellite+plane movement which allowed them to distinguish between the north and the south paths. So, for instance, if the satellite was moving north at a given time one would expect an increased red shift if the plane was flying south and a reduced one if flying north.

CNN replay of the analysis showed that the south route had the plane approaching the satellite like a train approaching an observer then moving away from the satellite for the rest of that route.
The doppler shift therefore resulted in a higher frequency initially then a lower frequency as the plane traveled south. If the plane had went north the doppler shift would only cause the frequency to get lower and lower much like the sound of a train traveling only away from an observer.
I assume they could also take into account the slight figure 8 that the satellite takes from the 64.5 degree nominal position.
Also they indicated they calibrated the data to known past flights by 777's going south vs north.

I don't suppose you have a link to the CNN video?

From what I can deduce they compared the redshift of the pings to other aircraft flying the proposed routes and were able to eliminate the north hypothesis.

The plane wasn't flying along that arc. At the moment in time that the ping was evaluated, the plane had to be somewhere on that arc. They never said it maintained an equidistance from the satellite. That would be bizarre.


text:
Is there a way, by which an airline or ATC would be alerted, if both pilots are asleep or incapacitated?
There are various questions around, which deals with what happens if both pilots are incapacitated, but my question is different.
I want to ask, is there a way by which an airline or ATC is alerted that both pilots are asleep or incapacitated, more like a camera which tracks eye movement, which would alert the pilots or cabin crew or ATC.

I don't think anything has been implemented, but it should be possible to monitor that sort of thing either with eye movement monitors or a brain wave monitor.

Do you mean something like Dead man's switch, used in railways?

@le_daim : Yes something similar, but a lot less simple. A simple alarm to the cabin crew, or to the pilots so they wake up. Already auto-pilot is there to fly the plane.  Or is it that a simple warning system is of no use, given the low frequency of such cases.

@alex My thoughts exactly

No there isn't. The only indication ATC has is if the pilot doesn't respond to radio calls but that can also be because of other issues like a radio malfunction.
There is not much ATC could do anyway if pilots are non-responsive.

Can the ATC contact the cabin crew, if pilots are non-responsive?

Yes, it's usually done with a couple grey jets and some close maneuvering.

Communication via phone is also possible

@pcfreakxx depending on altitude, whether a cellphone is turned on, and someone knows the number. Not all aircraft have cabin satphones, and I'm not sure it's even possible to place calls to those even if they are installed (and then too some has to know the number of course).

I know a controller that woke the crew up by putting the mouth piece of his mic into the ear piece of his headset and turned up the return loop to max. The squeal through their headsets or cockpit woke them.

To sum.
Position reports by pilots to ATC are mandatory every 30 min or 100 miles, whichever cames first, and ATC is expecting them and will question if they are not given.
(Oceanic procedures might differ)
If radios are not working, transponder to 7600 indicates exactly that to ATC, further procedures are location specific, tipically consisting of following flight plan route to land.
If none of the above happens, ATC can be very confident something is wrong.

Over the ocean you can have CPDLC as the main communication system. Which means they are going to only talk to you if you talk to them first or they have a request. I have heard of pilots all being asleep for over three, four hours over a long ocean crossing and no one being the wiser.

In Radar coverage pilots have no reporting requirements, the aircraft does it for them by their SSR paint. The first sign would be a request for frequency transfer. And silence.


text:
Is a failed ditching of an aircraft also Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT)?
Does CFIT apply in case of a plane (not an seaplane) failing a "landing" emergency in the open sea?

Boeing defines it in the following way:

Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) describes an accident in which a
  flight crew unintentionally flies an airplane into the ground, a
  mountain, water or an obstacle.

Since it's not unintentional, it's better described as forced landing or in your case, ditching.

"Controlled" may also imply there was nothing wrong with the plane.

I think it implies that anything wrong with the plane didn't cause the impact. A multi-engine plane with a single engine failure (normally very survivable) but which then flew into the ground while under control would be CFIT/

Controlled flight into terrain means that the aircraft is under positive control, that is it's within its flight envelope and is being actively managed, however it's course brings it unintentionally into contact with terrain. A aircraft flying into the side of a mountain is controlled flight into terrain. An aircraft ditching, successful or not, is an intentional action so doesn't qualify.


text:
Do jet fighters have air conditioning systems?
In most jet fighters, the cockpit is a glass dome and the pilots are exposed directly to the sun.
In addition, they are wearing flight suits and full face helmets (most of the time).
I can only imagine that with no respite from the sun, the cockpit must heat up very quickly.
What measures are there for climate control or pilot comfort?

Not just the sun, but friction heating, especially at supersonic speeds, can dramatically increase the airframe skin temperature.  Concorde, for example, would heat up to in excess of 100C at full mach 2.0+ cruise.  The SR-71, at mach 3.2, would heat up to 260C+.

Fighter pilots do not wear pressurised suits.  There is no need for them.

Good point, but I assume that this is handled by the materials/composition of the cockpit itself.

@Simon corrected, thanks.

I'm not sure how well it actually works. If you actually ask pilots (which I would do at air shows when I was a kid, if I could get near them since the lines were always long), the answer was usually you get plenty of heat but it's tough to cool off the cockpit.

@Simon: well, not currently. There are very few high-altitude fighters, piloted by humans (e.g. MiG-29). Unlikely will be in future, since UCAVs e.g. XQ-58 Valkyrie can go to higher altitude for less fuel, loiter longer etc.

Yes. Fighter aircraft have air conditioning systems. In general, they are called as Environmental Conditioning Systems (ECS). Their primary functions (as far as cockpit goes) include,

Cockpit Pressurization

Heating/Cooling/air-conditioning

Windshield anti-fog/anti-ice

The systems usually use conditioned engine bleed air or this purpose. The cockpit air conditioning is usually managed by the pilot. For example, in case of F-15, the following system is available:

Image from f-15e.info
with the available controls listed as,

TEMP switch: A three-way switch to manage cockpit temperature. When AUTO, cockpit temperature is automatically maintained at the temperature selected on the TEMP knob. When MANUAL, cockpit temperature may be changed with the knob, but not maitained automatically. When OFF, it shuts down off ECS air.
TEMP knob: A rotary knob to set the cockpit temperature.
FLOW switch: A three-way switch to select air flow. MIN, MAX and NORM settings are available for minimum/maximum/normal air flow, respectively.
FLOW knob: A four-position knob to set the air source. When BOTH, bleed air is supplied from both engines. When L ENG or R ENG, bleed air is supplied from the left/right engine only. When OFF, no bleed air is supplied.

The following image shows the other controls associated with ECS.

Image from f-15e.info

Very detailed answer :)

Quick Introduction to the Airconditioning Unit
In the A7-E the air-conditioning system takes high pressure bleed air and passes it through the primary heat exchanger. After here it enters compressor wheel section of the a/c unit, where the heat exchanger reduces the temperature of the bleed air.
The A7-E cockpit temperature is maintained either manually or by setting the cockpit temperature with the temperature control knob. There is cockpit over-temperature protection which is provided in automatic and manual settings, and limits the cockpit temperature to 210 degrees F. See the image below for the pictures and locations of the controls.
The air-conditioning system also provides anti-exposure suit ventilation and this is controlled separately from cockpit temperature. In my squadron very few of the pilots used anti-exposure suites, and most used wet suits when flying over cold water (less than 60 degrees F).
The anti-g suit also uses air provided by the air conditioning unit.
Comfort Level
While airborne, with an operable air-conditioning unit, the cockpit was very comfortable. This was true for the coldest to the hottest days I experienced. Full gear was: wet suit (cold water operations), flight suit, g-suit, LPA and survival harness, helmet with visor down, flight boots, Nomex gloves, and oxygen mask on. The oxygen was conditioned and so was always cool on the face, and not uncomfortable.
There were times where the system was not quite useful. While on the tarmac was one such time, and this due to limited power on the aircraft, and hence lower pressure bleed air. Don't remember it ever getting too bad though, because we could have the canopy closed. On the deck of the carrier we were required to have our canopy open, and without much power on the aircraft, there was almost no cooling. The environment on the deck was hot. Think big asphalt parking lot in Houston with Jet exhaust everywhere. It did become almost unbearable if you were subjected to someone's jet exhaust, which got trapped in the cockpit by the clam shell canopy, burned the eyes, and made it difficult to breathe.
NATOPS Check Ride with no A/C
I flew out to Lemore from China Lake to pick up a NATOPS Check Pilot to go through my flight safety test. It was a cloudless day and warm out, but not hot. On the way there the air conditioning failed and there was no cooling or heating. The heat in the cockpit built up quickly. I decided to press on and by the time I got to Lemore my flight suit was completely wet from head to toe from sweat. It was pretty bad in the cockpit. I drank a lot of water and sat down to brief with the other pilot. I asked him if I should re-schedule the check ride and he said we didn't have to. It was an experience I don't think either one of us had had up to that point. A very uncomfortable flight, but still not unbearable. Any longer flight time would have caused distraction from the physical discomfort, and dangerous dehydration.

From second-hand experience (I can say I am really close with a Tornado pilot), the Tornado has a compressor stage airbleed that directs some cold air directly in the cockpit.
He would describe it as a direct blast of air in the middle of your stomach, without any possibility to direct it elsewhere.
To answer your question, then, we can say that at least some military aircraft do have an air conditioning system, even if it is probably not the best system ever.

Searching a bit further, this book mentions a "Normalair Garrett system":

that, from a quick search, turns out to be the name of a british life-supporting system manufacturer, I would then suspect that this system is not limited to a few military aircraft, but rather to be quite widespread.


text:
Why do high-speed water impacts / ditching usually result in structural loss of the airframe?
Plywood sheets can penetrate tree trunks unscathed - when pushed by hurricane or tornado winds.  Why wouldn't an airplane fuselage, wings and tail behave the same way impacting ocean water at a steep angle at 300-500 mph?  That is, penetrate and remain intact. I have seen a lot of supposition written about this which seems based on common sense, but common sense might be misleading.  Has  the outcome of such an event ever been demonstrated?

The penetration succeeds because there is a void behind the object being penetrated, that's not the case with the ocean.

possible duplicate of Has a commercial airliner ever crash-landed in an ocean?

@ratchetfreak - I can just picture an airline busting all the way through the entire planet and shooting out the other side... at the same speed it was going! ROFL.

And airplanes are designed to crumble, similar to an automobile, in an effort to absorb energy that would otherwise be transferred to the passenger(s).

However you look at it, a piece of plywood and and an airplane (no matter what type) are just not comparable in terms of structure or structural performance. Plywood may withstand several 100 g´s, while an airplane can only take a few without (gloabally) crumpling like tin-foil.

@DannyBeckett I disagree that this is a duplicate (why did I only see this in the review list today, nearly a week after you voted?). The other question is about the possibility and practicality of evacuation after an emergency landing on water; this question is about the plane crashing uncontrolled into the ocean.

Plywood sheets can penetrate tree trunks unscathed

The plywood isn't unscathed by the process

Why wouldn't an airplane [be unscathed by] impacting ocean water at a steep angle at 300-500 mph?

The aircraft will not travel at that same speed underwater. That means that a considerable force is applied to the aircraft to decelerate it in a short distance. That force greatly exceeds what the structure was designed for.

The aircraft will not travel at that same speed underwater. Not for very long, at least...

The plywood was like a cleaver blade hitting the tree. Lots of relatively dense mass and momentum concentrating on a very thin edge.
An airplane wing (let alone fuselage) is not a thin edge. It is blunt, rounded, and thick. Behind that edge is a low mass and low density object. For the size, aircraft are very light weight and are a carrying a tiny fraction of the momentum a solid (non hollow) aluminum object of the same shape and volume would carry.
If that plywood wasn't a solid material but rather was hollow like an airplane (thus reducing it's mass, momentum, and consequentially the force acting on the tree), we'd probably see the tree intact and shattered remains of the plywood on the ground.

"An airplane wing (let alone fuselage) is not a thin edge" - Some wings are.

Has the outcome of such an event ever been demonstrated?

The outcome of an aircraft flying nose-first into water has been demonstrated an unfortunately-large number of times. And it doesn't end well for the aircraft.
The situations you're describing are very different. The physics of a plywood sheet penetrating the trunk of a tree happen because of the extremely high winds. When the wind is 150 mph (and parallel to the board,) the path of least resistance may very well be straight through the tree. Any deflection of the board to one side or the other would increase its cross-sectional area relative to the wind and, thus, would be countered by the force of the wind itself. If you were to otherwise attempt to fire a plywood board into a tree (in the absence of wind,) I think you'd find quite different results (though not quite as different as the aircraft impacting water scenario.)
On the other hand, the physics of flying an aircraft nose-first into water at 300-500 mph differ only slightly from those of flying an aircraft nose-first into the ground at 300-500 mph. In the first few seconds, the water will displace somewhat more than the ground would have, but not much. It takes a lot of force to accelerate the water to the sides quickly enough for it to be displaced by the aircraft at 300-500 mph and, since the force is applied equally (but opposite in direction) to both the aircraft and the water, the forces applied to the aircraft will be plenty to destroy it very quickly. The pieces of the aircraft will continue to lose speed until either they're floating on top of the water (for pieces that are less dense than water) or are sinking at their terminal velocity into the water (which will be quite slow in water.) Meanwhile, all of the kinetic energy of the aircraft is being dissipated very quickly into doing things like crushing the airframe and/or ripping it apart, accelerating water out of the path of the aircraft, heating up the water and (more so) the aircraft, etc.
As far as why the forces would be enough to crush the aircraft (as opposed to what would happen if you fired a long, narrow, cylindrical chunk of solid aluminum into the water at the same angle and speed,) the aircraft is relatively hollow. The cross-sectional area impacting the water is much greater for an aircraft than for a cylinder of solid aluminum of equal mass and length, which means that a much higher total force will be applied to it (similar pressure, but integrated over a much larger surface area.) Furthermore, since a solid chunk of aluminum is a bit more dense than the air that fills most of the cabin of an aircraft, the aircraft would be more apt to crush. The portion of the hull impacting the water would be accelerated into the space behind it, since the forward force being applied to it by the contents of the cabin and the more aft portions of the hull would be much smaller than the backward force being applied to it by the water it's impacting. That is to say, the hull would be crushed very much like an aluminum can. When you stomp on an aluminum can with your shoe, the can crushes rather than penetrating your foot (at least you hope so...) This situation is much more analogous to an aircraft ramming into water than the case of plywood in a hurricane encountering a tree that you mention.
Finally, as others have mentioned, the reason that the plywood can actually exit the tree is just that it doesn't get slowed down completely to a stop by the collision and friction with the tree as it's entering the tree. For a sufficiently-narrow tree, this allows it to exit the other side before it's completely stopped. However, for a sufficiently-thick tree, the situation would be largely unchanged except that the leading edge of the board would stop somewhere inside the tree.

Good observations in these answers. At high speed impact, a lot of water would have to be moved out of the way by the nose, producing large forces. The plywood, to survive, only needs to split apart the tree, must be undergoing only compressive force, no bending, and plywood is pretty strong in compression.  So is a cylinder, although as you point out, there is a limit.  Thanks.

Plywood into tree super slo mo might show the plywood impact shock splitting the tree, plywood bends slightly but goes through, little resistance to split as there is air on either side.  Water is (unfortunately) non compressible.  As has been stated, at high speed there simply isn't time to push it out of the way.  The impact into water destroys the plane in a fraction of a second.

In the case of plywood penetrating a tree trunk, consider the conservation of energy. The plywood might be flying at a certain speed before impact, some kinetic energy is used to break the tree trunk, and then the plywood (presumably) keeps flying at a reduced speed.
Still considering conservation of energy, an aircraft impacting the ocean obviously cannot "continue" flying at a similar speed, so all that kinetic energy (and there is a lot of it) must be used to do some work. That work will be crushing the (relatively delicate) airframe.
It is possible to make a missile or something that can penetrate water (eg. Aerial torpedo). However, such things are designed to do so and passenger aircraft are definitely not.

You seem to be claiming that the kinetic energy of the plane is converted into heat (by deforming the plane's structure). Yes, a significant amount of the energy will go into deforming the structure but a large amount will also go into launching water into the air. You're not considering enough of the system to be able to use conservation of energy.

Could be conceptualized by treating water as an elastic solid.  There is very little "give" or cushion.  Water can only be displaced.  The plane probably crushes 10x faster than the water can be moved away.  High divers know to lock their hands and go "straight in", minimizing area of impact.  But at 300 mph, water is essentially no less forgiving than stone.

@RobertDiGiovanni: I think you meant to say "no more forgiving".